RouletteWeekend

The prompt for today was to describe what brought me closer or further away from my religious devotions.

I don’t think I ever really had any religious devotions. My mom sent all of us to a Catholic school in my late elementary, early middle school years. We went on scholarship because we were living well below the poverty line. I don’t really think I knew that back then. All I really knew is that I was embarrassed of our loud station wagon that didn’t look like the other parents’ cars when my mom would drop us off or pick us up from school. But in Catholic school, you get to wear the same thing as everyone else. There were no “brand name” uniforms, and if there were, I wasn’t aware of it. Catholic school was where I fell in love with English and knew that maybe I should be a writer. Mrs. Burchard, I think that was her name. She was my 8th grade English teacher (maybe 7th). You know that saying that people may forget the words you said, but they will never forget the way you made them feel? She was one of those teachers. She made me feel like I had a purpose, that my words mattered. She made me feel important. Unlike the nuns, that made me feel unworthy no matter what I was doing. Whether it was not slanting my cursive letters enough or making me feel like I had to lie every Friday that we went to confession because I couldn’t actually think of anything I had done that would have been considered a sin. I was too busy trying to shrink myself into invisibility at home so that I wouldn’t stress my mom out any more than she already was to be committing sins that needed forgiven on a weekly basis.

I was an anxious child. My mom used to tell me that when I was three, I had grey hair on my head or is it gray? I guess it depends on which side of the Atlantic your tea comes from. And whenever anybody would even attempt to scold me or accuse me of anything, I would immediately start heaving. The gray eventually went away. I guess it grew out, it’s just recently started growing back and I’m welcoming it. The heaving, I learned as I grew up was less throwing up and more panic attack. It took me years to figure out how to feel it coming, how to make it stop, how to self-sooth, how to calm, how to embrace the heart palpitations instead of letting them freak me out. I guess at 3 years old, the body just reacts and the only thing it knows is heaving, maybe? It wasn’t until I got older that I would feel the racing heart, be able to describe the feeling of someone holding me in a bear hug until I could no longer breathe, and know when it was time to pull the car over to the side of the road because whether I liked it or not, the tears were going to come and my eyeballs did not come with windshield wipers and I wasn’t ready to die in a car accident.

And in all that time, never once, did I feel God or Jesus standing next to me to comfort me. I don’t think I lost my religion. I just never really found it. I’m not Atheist. I don’t even think Agnostic is the right word. But maybe Faithful is too strong a word too.

I do have faith, though. I’ve always had faith that things will work out. And that they will work out the way they are supposed to. I’ve just always had a hard time giving the credit to a big man in the sky watching us all, waiting for us to “sin” so he can sit back and deny us entry into his super cool eternal house party. And I don’t believe in the idea of “one true religion.” If there is a God and if multiple religions are based on the idea that there is a God (or gods) out there in the universe and those gods are giving ideas to people here on Earth, or showing themselves to a select few to “spread the good news,” then why would that God want his “people” to believe that there is only one true religion that you must follow in order for you to get to the pearly gates? Wouldn’t it make more sense for a God to appear to different people in different ways as different religions that they could understand in order to give all of them the bigger, more unified, picture that we are all just supposed to go and do the best we can without hurting others intentionally, apologizing when we do hurt them, and try to make the next right choice that is the best one for everyone involved?

I know that it doesn’t matter how perfect a thing is, if humans are involved, we have a way of perverting even the most beautiful of things. That’s why I can’t get behind the trinity and organized religion. Too much do as I say, not as I do. Now they’ve dragged it into the political realm and they’ve twisted the bible so much that they are normalizing the starvation of children, the abuse of refugees, the demonization of people based on the color of their skin, which ironically is the same color of skin Jesus had.

To be clear, I’m not negating the existence of Jesus. I do believe he existed. I may even believe he was a prophet or an avatar of God as she exists, I also believe that Joseph Smith existed, and maybe he wasn’t some insane person that I believe he was, maybe, he too, was a prophet or an avatar of God as he exists, same with all the other religious prophets that many people believe in: Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Elijah, Daniel, Samuel, Jonah, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Krishna, Guru Nanak, Haile Selassie I, Muhammad, and for me, even Bob Marley.

I think my problem with religion is that when you decide that you are going to join a religion and that religion has decided that they are the “one true religion,” they don’t just ask, but they expect you to give up all of your critical thinking skills and follow blindly, “faithfully” without questioning anything. And if you look at history over the years, if people had questioned the “religious teachings” instead of blindly believing that God wanted whole groups of peoples to be destroyed (like what is happening right now- here in the US and abroad) maybe people would have found some compassion. If people really, truly wanted to follow the teachings of the parables in all of the books those religions hold so near and dear to their hearts, we would actually love our neighbors, we would accept our neighbors, we would feed our neighbors, we would not judge every person we meet, we would be decent people… as a whole, not as an exception to the rule.

The Christians are usually the first to say, “but what if you’re wrong?” And I’m ok with being wrong. It’s part of humanity. And what if I am wrong? If I’m Christian, then I go to hell. All that fire and damnation, but if it’s just my soul and my soul can’t feel physical pain, then is the fire really all that bad? Maybe being punished with all my repressed memories will be worse? If I’m Hindu, then maybe I come back as a grasshopper, or a fruit fly over and over until I’ve learned my lesson. If I’m a Buddhist, then what? Realms of suffering or something right?

As a former Catholic, I’ve always made jokes about ending up in purgatory which was basically just sitting in a train station being forced to drink rum and diet coke and not being able to get on the train whenever it stops until people still alive pray you out of the train station and you finally get to get on the train when it stops and get off at heaven.

But if I’m a Jehovah’s witness, then I’m already in Hell and I’m just waiting for all of it to end so I get all my loved ones back from their memorial tombs and get to live on earth, that is now paradise, where the food isn’t poisoned, the sun always shines, and nobody is obese or has knee pain.

I mean, all of it is it’s own kind of encouragement to believe, but honestly, I’d rather have faith that things are going to work out, I’d rather have my humanity and be able to have a conversation with the homeless person without judgement than to show up at church every Sunday praying to a God that for whatever reason lets me walk out of the church each week to be a terrible person with zero repercussions until I’m dead, and even none after that as long as I’ve “been saved.”

So religious devotions? Nah, I think I’ll pass. I will continue to learn about other religions. I will continue to learn about other cultures. I will continue to foster my own version of faith and acceptance and community. And I’m quite sure that I don’t need to “find” religion to do it. If being religious makes me worse at being human, then I’ll choose being human every time—and for me, faith without religion looks like a Thursday night at open mic, sipping a chai latte, celebrating with the barista who just got her kids back, found stable housing, and is finally living the life she’s fought so hard for. Actually, I think losing my religion probably made me a better person.